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Lake Land College instructor creates GPS game app for students visiting campus - Lake Land College, Mattoon Illinois

LAKER NATION NEWS

Lake Land College instructor creates GPS game app for students visiting campus

Posted on May 20, 2013

It’s no secret that when visiting the Lake Land College campus, it’s easy to get turned around. Most contribute this to the circular layout of the campus and the buildings that fit into that circle like pie pieces. But, for area high school students who recently visited campus to participate in the annual Business and Computer Contest, sponsored by the Business Division, they got to navigate campus with a smart phone application designed by Scott Rhine, IT instructor and coordinator of game development and network administration.

“Essentially, I adapted a GPS enabled game I found online through wherigo.com and designed it so that potential students could use it to explore Lake Land’s campus,” explained Rhine.

Rhine said that the game was originally intended for geocaching hobbyists, but that he saw a use for it at Lake Land, where it was debuted as a virtual scavenger hunt for high school students at the Business and Computer Contest.

The scavenger hunt required the students to access certain GPS points on campus and once they approached the destination, a virtual classroom popped up on their smart phone and asked them a quiz question about the Business Division.

“This gave the students a way to explore the campus on their own, while at the same time learn a little bit about the college,” said Rhine. “They thought it was pretty cool, especially since they got to use their own devices for the game.”

“This was a good way to get to tour the campus,” said Dieterich High School Business Teacher, Larry Arney.

While this was Rhine’s first time to design an application like this specific to Lake Land, he said that he sees a lot of usefulness in programs like this for the college and plans to pursue more opportunities to use this technology.

As part of the Illinois Working Connections IT Faculty Development Institute, which will be held in Springfield May 20-25, Rhine plans to design another smart phone app to try on his colleagues, but this time with locations and clues specific to Abraham Lincoln.

For more information about the Business Division at Lake Land College, visit: www.lakelandcollege.edu and select the “Academic Information” link to learn more. For questions about the Game Development program at Lake Land, contact Rhine at 217-234-5353 or srhine@lakelandcollege.edu.”